


Choose Your Prince

by dreamsofstars



Category: Wolf Hall Series - Hilary Mantel
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 13:56:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1094699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamsofstars/pseuds/dreamsofstars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rafe Sadler reflects on his long association with Thomas Cromwell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Choose Your Prince

**Author's Note:**

  * For [acchikocchi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/acchikocchi/gifts).



Choose your prince. This is something that Thomas Cromwell often says and Rafe Sadler has taken this to heart as he has taken so many other things that he has learned under Cromwell’s patronage. As far as princes go, there could be no finer prince in all of Christendom then Henry. More temperate ones, perhaps. More discerning ones, quite possibly. But saving his grace, whatever flaws the king has is outweighed by his sense of purpose and vision for England and we all must remember this. Francis would not be so bold, Phillip not so cunning.

What goes unsaid in the Sadler household is that while Rafe is a most devoted and loyal subject of Henry, the king is not, properly speaking, the prince that Rafe has chosen.

Henry is a fixture, the axis around which England revolves but he is just a prince. Though it is not proper to think so, there were princes before and there will be princes after him. One hopes, at least, given the current situation. But Cromwell… he has been a steady fixture in Rafe’s life, the star in the firmament since he was seven. His father had asked Cromwell to take him in and teach him all he knew and Cromwell had done exactly that. Rafe is grateful for this in a way he thinks he will never be able to properly explain - if he had not been brought up there, he would have been brought up by someone else and thus have become another Rafe with another life. The Rafe he is now is someone he is quite pleased to be and he is absolutely certain he could not possibly have gotten along as he has without the Cromwellian handprint on his life.

“We cannot do without the man in charge” is something he had said once and it is just as true now as it had been then. His star is rising with Cromwell but even if it had not, even if Cromwell had not survived the cardinal’s fall, he would still be at his side, as faithful as little Bella is to his master.

It is more than gratitude for the schooling he had been given, for the apprenticeship he had served. It goes beyond the opportunity for advancement, the chance to appear useful in the eyes of the court. In a single word, he would stay for love. Some would call him foolish and sentimental and perhaps they would be right but it is the truth, all the same.

He has learned much throughout his years and though there were plenty who might (and did) whisper otherwise, to his eyes there is no better man to emulate. Nobility and having a title is all well and good but he knows, as Uncle Norfolk and all of his ilk have not yet realized, it all means nothing without the goodwill of the commons, the loans from the moneylenders, the hard work and diligence of the men who sit below the salt.

From no one else could he learn so thoroughly the value of information, no matter how insignificant or dubious. From Cromwell’s example, he sees how to be unfailingly polite to those set above and below him. He takes the point that you never know when you might need their goodwill or a favor and your cause is easier when they think well of you. 

He also learns, though he is aware he treads dangerously in the matter, there are other interpretations of the gospel, that the pope’s word is not the last word on a subject. He is careful, discreet, all of the things a man who loves the gospel in these uncertain times must be but the more he reads, the more he is convinced the pope is nothing more than the bishop of Rome.

If he had to list all of the lessons he has learned, he could go on for hours and still not yet come to the end. His father and mother may have brought him into this world but it is Cromwell who made him a man. 

With all the connections affording to him, he is aware that he could (and should have) made a more advantageous marriage but he does not regret it, not even after the lecture he is read about it. Helen is a beautiful, kind woman but more than that, she knows. She understands what Cromwell means to him. Without his help, she would have been lost and alone, surrounded by piles of laundry and hypocritical nuns and away from her children. Without his kindness, she would have spent the rest of her days looking over her shoulder for her husband and knowing she had nowhere to turn.

So when he spends his days and nights working for Cromwell, she does not rail or reprove him. She only asks how he is, if he ate and that he take care not to work himself to death for what would the man in charge do without him?

He is grateful for that because if he had to explain why he drove himself on and on for a man who is simultaneous regarded as a devil and a saint, he would not have the words. It is more than the love of a son for a father, the respect of an apprentice for his master. It is something that he dares not say, dares not even think because this is a world run by rules and regulations, by the class a man is born into, by scriptures jealously hoarded by a few men with no understanding of anything other than their narrow compass.

Still, the world is changing. The Lord Cardinal is gone but a butcher’s son rises to the top and he along with him. Katherine the Queen is now Katherine the Dowager Princess of Wales and the daughter of a knight is shortly to be crowned queen. A world with Anne Boleyn is queen is a world where anything can happen.

The order of things may turn inside out but there will always be one thing that is certain, one thing that can never change no matter how his fortune rises or falls.

He has chosen his prince. He is Cromwell’s man through and through.


End file.
